Related Pages:

Resources and Library:

Health & Fitness

Regular exercise provides a myriad of health benefits for seniors including a stronger heart, a positive mental outlook, and an increased chance of remaining independent.

Walking as a way of life

By Emily Smith; for Partnership for a Walkable America, University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center

Enjoying trails is a healthy, life-long habit

"Use it or lose it."

That's
what doctors these days are telling
senior citizens about their bodies.
But seniors needn't think they have
to sign up for high-impact aerobics
classes or run 10K races to stay in
shape. Instead, fitting a simple 35-minute
walk into their daily activities can
keep them physically strong and agile.

"Walking
is a tremendously good activity for
senior citizens. It's cheap, it's
simple, almost anybody can do it and
it Walking has a multitude of health
benefits for everyone. It helps seniors
has very real benefits for maintain
mobility and independence. Older adults,"
said Dr. Michael Pratt, the acting
chief for the Physical Activity and
Health Branch in the Division of Nutrition
and Physical Activity at the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention
in Atlanta (CDC).

Dr. Pratt,
is a member of the "Partnership for
a Walkable America," a coalition of
private, state and federal organizations
united with the common cause of increasing
public awareness about the benefits
of walking. Regular exercise is a
must for older adults if they want
to maintain mobility and independence,
Dr. Pratt said. "Statistics show that
most older adults aren't getting enough
activity and we know that they stand
to benefit from regular exercise,"
he said.

In fact, Americans
in general don't get enough exercise,
Dr. Pratt said. According to the Report
to the Surgeon General on Physical
Activity and Health issued by the
CDC in July 1996, sixty percent of
Americans are not regularly active
and 25 percent are essentially sedentary.

"What
health experts have now discovered
is that regular exercise can help
prevent many of the conditions that
frequently lead to a ride in an ambulance
to the hospital."

Sedentary
Life Can Be Deadly

New studies
are showing that sedentary lifestyles
can result in muscle loss and significantly
lowered aerobic capacity. Researchers
at the Department of Physical Education
at San Diego State University recently
completed a 23-year study involving
two groups of middle-age men. One
group exercised regularly for 23 years.
The other exercised approximately
five years and then stopped.

When
researchers tested the fitness of
the men at the end of the study, they
found those who hadn't exercised had
lost 41 percent of their maximal aerobic
power while those who exercised lost
just 13 percent. These results were
interesting since decreased aerobic
power has long been thought to be
a natural product of aging.

Additionally,
the researchers found that none of
the men in the exercise group developed
high blood pressure, although two
men in this group had high blood pressure
initially. In contrast, 60 percent
of the men who didn't exercise developed
high blood pressure. Another health
bonus the researchers discovered was
that the blood pressure of the men
who exercised was 25 percent below
the average of men their age.

Brain
Power

Research has also
shown exercise is good for the mind.
In a recent study at Scripps College
in Claremont, Calif., researchers
compared 62 exercisers, ages 55 to
91, with an equal number of people
in the same age bracket who didn't
exercise to determine the possible
effects regular activity might have
on cognitive skills. Both groups were
given a one-hour series of tests assessing
memory, reaction time and reasoning.

The
results? The exercisers performed
significantly better in all reaction-time
tests, all reasoning tests and in
two of the three memory tests. "I
think this study strongly suggests
that exercise is important in preserving
our mental abilities as we grow older,"
said Louis Clarkson Smith, Ph.D.,
who conducted the research with Alan
A. Hartley, Ph.D.

The Benefits
Of Walking

According to
Partnership member Mark Fenton, "The
elderly have some special physical
concerns that can be helped with regular
exercise like walking."

"As
people get older," he said, "they
seem to be at greater risk of developing
osteoporosis and with regular exercise
like walking, that seems to be forestalled."
Fenton, editor of the Boston-based
Walking Magazine, adds that the psychological
benefits of regular physical activity
for older adults are immense.

"We
see again and again that regular exercise
gives an improved sense of self-worth
and an improved sense of purpose,"
he said. "It's also clear that regular
activity may reduce the likelihood
of clinical depression -- a problem
among the elderly who may begin to
feel they are a burden to their family.
With regular exercise, they can continue
to be contributing members of society
and if they want, they can get involved
in volunteer work or part-time work."

Other
health benefits from regular physical
activity such as walking include:

Reduced risk of dying prematurely

Decreased
risk of dying from heart disease

Decreased
risk of developing colon cancer

Reduced
risk of developing high blood pressure

Help
in reducing blood pressure in people
who already have high blood pressure

Decreased
risk of developing diabetes

Lower
risk of developing hypertension

Increased
muscle strength, flexibility and sense
of balance, all of which reduce the
risk of falls

Help in controlling
weight

"I think what's
really notable is just how much benefit
there is for older adults to be physically
active," DL Pratt said. "We used to
think that once you got to a certain
age, it really didn't make any difference
anymore, but what we're finding out
is that even men and women into their
nineties can see major increases in
cardiovascular fitness and strength
with regular physical activity."

America's
Exercise Habits

Exercise
seems to be something that comes naturally
to people who were born and raised
before the automobile boom and are
now in their eighties and nineties,
according to Maggie Spilner, an editor
for Walking Magazine who has
written a column on walking for the
publication since 1988.

"My
grandmother walked to work every day
because she didn't know how to drive
a car but my mother, who is now 74,
drives her car everywhere and doesn't
get any more exercise than what it
takes to run a household," she said.
"From what I have seen, our parents
have been at greater risk than any
other generation," she said. "They
were caught in the middle of an industrialization
movement in this country."

Spilner
said those who are now in their nineties
relied on foot for the most part to
get around while the generation that
followed developed daily patterns
that depended on automobiles. "Our
generation knows enough to exercise,"
she said, "but the lifestyle of our
parents sapped them of any exercise.

Preventative
Medicine

What health experts
have now discovered is that regular
exercise can help prevent many of
the conditions that frequently lead
to a ride in an ambulance to the hospital,
according to Dan Manz, a past president
of the National Association of State
Emergency Medical Service Directors,
a Partner agency.

"From an emergency
medical service perspective, what
continues to be the leading ambulance
call in America is cardiovascular
problems and certainly the population
that is highly at risk for that is
the elderly," Manz said. "Clearly
aerobic exercise like walking is a
key to reducing the risk of heart
attack." Manz cautioned, however,
that those with heart problems should
check with a physician before beginning
an exercise program.

According
to Dr. Pratt, regular exercise can
make a difference in the strength
and endurance of older Americans.
"We've found that loss of strength
and endurance that appear to be due
to aging are really due to inactivity,"
he said. "Studies show that one in
three men and half of women are completely
sedentary in their leisure by the
time they reach 75-years-old."

The
Independent Life

By far
the biggest difference regular exercise
can make in an older person's life,
however, is in increasing their chances
of remaining independent and able
to care for themselves, Fenton said.
"Exercise seems to be at the heart
of maintaining functional mobility
and independence and that's critical
for an older person," he said. "Regular
exercise can mean the difference between
a continual fulfilled life or the
beginning of their demise."

Elberta
Stutts, an 80-year-old retired employee
of American Bakeries in Dorada, N.C.,
can attest to that. "I walk about
three and a half miles a day in my
neighborhood and the last time I had
my check-up at the doctor's office,
the nurse said: 'From what I can tell,
you have the heart of an athlete."'

What's
more, Mrs. Stutts said she has gotten
to know her community through her
daily walks. "I started walking for
exercise when I quit work and I only
knew maybe the next door neighbor
or the neighbor across the street,"
she said. "But I've gotten to know
everybody in the neighborhood now.
What's so near is that when I don't
walk for a couple of days, my neighbors
start calling me, wanting to know
why I haven't been out walking."

Mrs.
Stutts added that her daily walks
keep her feeling positive about life.
"I can be feeling down and I can get
out and walk and it helps me a lot
to keep my head on straight," she
said.

Start Now!

It
might also be of interest for seniors
to know that it's never too late to
begin exercising, said Dr. Pratt.

"One
of the issues with older adults, particularly
with women, is that many have grown
up thinking that exercise is not for
them," he said. "They think if they're
not athletes, they shouldn't be active."

"To this, I would like to say
that it's never too late to start.
Most of the benefits of exercise that
accrue for younger adults also apply
to older adults, no matter when they
begin exercising," he said.